Girl from the north country / Boots of Spanish Leather, the music and the lyrics

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

A list of previous articles in this series is at the foot of the page.

By Tony Attwood

Two songs together in one article in this “lyrics AND music” series – why is that? Because the music of each song is almost identical. What’s more, there is a real link to the traditional song “Scarborough Fair,” which Dylan drew upon for aspects of the melody and lyrics of “Girl from the North Country,” including the line from the refrain, “Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine”. Ewan McColl first made the song better known to contemporary audiences in 1947.

As a result, Scarborough Fair is, for many English people (and I don’t know about other countries) one of the most famous of all the traditional songs. And it gained an extra popularity once Simon and Garfunkle used it as the basis for their song “Canticle”.

Girl from the North Country was recorded in 1963, and it opens not on the key-chord of the song but on the chord normally written as VI which is a minor chord. The recording below from the original album version is in Bb (B flat) and opens with G minor chord which resolves to F and then finally takes us to the key chord of Bb.

This is very unusual for Dylan, although it is a perfectly acceptable way of approaching a song, as it emphasises the sadness (because opening minor chords are generally associated with sadness by tradition, although not for any logical reason).

And of course that minor chord is what is needed to emphasise the sadness of the lyrics. I mean, “She once was a true love of mine” … you can’t get sadder than that, can you?

Unfortunately, not all websites and printed transcriptions follow what Dylan is actually doing and insist of giving us a major chord at the start and that is not just a mistake, it changes the entire meaning of the music and hence the lyrics. It suggests musically that everything is ok, when it certainly is not.

A common version of the song as sung in the 18th century reads

"O, where are you going?" "To Scarborough fair,"
    Savoury, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
"Remember me to a lass who lives there,
    For once she was a true love of mine

… and so we can see that Dylan took most of the lyrics as well as the melody. Of course the original was simply sung, there were no accompanying instruments, so whether one emphasises the minor key or not is a personal choice today, but the melody certainly implies the minor key, from the earliest versions.

However, a number of artists have attempted to take us back to the original version but with a contemporary accompaniment. This is one I particularly like

However for Bob once was not enough for he went back to the song for “Boots of Spanish Leather.”

Bob credited both Martin Carthy and Bob Davenport with helping him discover and understand the implications of these English folk songs.

And to jump to another issue currently occupying me, it is this sort of re-working of traditions that so annoys Heylin, who appears to find it a form of cheating. If you are interested in that particular line of argument you might be interested in the evolving series “The Double Life of Bob Dylan”. At the moment of writing this article, I’m up to episode 11 but as long as the series keeps going it will be highlighted on the home page.

Here’s a list of the other songs included in this series….

Leave a Reply